Cairns and Morosi? How the truth emerged

September 21 2002

Jim Cairns, a former deputy PM, tells Tony Stephens why he finally admitted to having an affair with Junie Morosi.

It seems like an eternity ago, rather than just 28 years. The Federal Government believed in significant interference in the market system, then called capitalism. Keynesian economics, which focused on the need for full employment, had a place in the grand scheme of things. A radical like Jim Cairns was Deputy Prime Minister, speaking out not about the needs of the aspirational class, but about the corrosive social effects of acquisitiveness.

And sex seemed different. Rather, the media coverage of sex was different. The media had kept a discreet distance from the private lives of Australian political leaders. This policy was soundly based on the theory these private lives were not the proper concern of the people unless they affected, or were likely to affect, decisions made for or about the people.

Junie Morosi's presence in Canberra changed things. Born in China to an Italian father and Portuguese mother, she had come to Australia from the Philippines. Exotic and very bright, she joined Jim Cairns' staff in 1974, when he was Treasurer.

The Cairns-Morosi partnership attracted innuendo and gossip. Some of the media appeared to behave badly. The Daily Telegraph published a photograph of the couple at the 1975 ALP conference, suggesting that they had breakfasted together. In fact, Cairns' wife, Gwen, had just left the table.

Sydney's The Sun ran a story in which Cairns said he had "a kind of love" for Morosi. Cairns had said love ranged from his the Vietnamese people to a boss' for money. His respect for, and trust in, Morosi was "akin to a kind of love". The Sun headline was "My Love for Junie", alongside a photograph of Morosi in a swimsuit. ");document.write("

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The whole story came full circle this week when Cairns admitted to John Cleary on ABC Local Radio that he had had a sexual affair with Morosi. Now it appears that the media was not behaving so badly after all.

Why make the admissions after so long? "It's true, I suppose," Cairns said. Why hadn't he admitted it before? "Because nobody asked if I'd been to bed with her."

There are a couple of points to make here. First, it seems that journalists at the time were less ready to put the hard word on Cairns. Those were not the times for the direct questions that drove Bill Clinton to say: "I did not have sex with that woman, Monica Lewinsky."

Second, as Cairns' most recent biographer, Paul Strangio, says, the focus on the affair detracts from the man's record as a pioneering politician.

Paul Ormonde, an earlier biographer, described Cairns as Labor's most charismatic figure in a generation or more. He was a champion schoolboy athlete, a policeman who, some say, might have become a police commissioner, and a university lecturer in economics with a PhD and professorial possibilities, before turning to parliament. He was an early opponent of the White Australia policy and supporter of closer ties with Asia. He led the 1970 march in Melbourne against the Vietnam War. Up to 100,000 people marched with him.

Gough Whitlam beat him only 38-32 for the Labor Party leadership in 1968. In government, he worked to open up overseas trade, leading a trade mission to China in 1973. As acting Prime Minister, he won praise for his handling of the aftermath of Cyclone Tracy.

Evan Williams, who worked with Whitlam, has written: "If Cairns had a kind of love for Morosi, we all had a kind of love for him. Every country needs heroes and Cairns had heroic qualities."

That said, the focus on the affair is justified for two reasons: Cairns agrees with several of his former colleagues that the affair "quite distracted him". With the oil price shocks and the end of the postwar capitalist boom around the world, it was not a good time for the Treasurer to be distracted. He was sacked from the Treasury for misleading the House of Representatives over loans negotiations, one of several crises that led to the fall of the Whitlam Government in 1975. On the day of Labor's campaign launch, Cairns was helping launch Morosi's book, Sex, Prejudice and Politics.

The admission also raises the question of evidence given by Cairns and Morosi in defamation cases brought against media organisations, in which they denied having had a sexual relationship. Journalists might have been reluctant to put the hard word on Cairns and Morosi but Cairns was asked in the NSW Supreme Court in 1982 whether he had ever had an adulterous relationship. He answered: "No, never."

The jury found that the article contained an imputation that Cairns was "improperly involved with his assistant, Junie Morosi, in a romantic or sexual association . . ." but that it was not defamatory. Cairns and Morosi went to the Court of Appeal, where they lost 2-1.

However, Morosi won $17,000 in 1977 for defamation claims from The Mirror and $10,000 in 1978 from radio 2GB.

Cairns turns 88 next month. Morosi, now 69, had no regrets this week about the liaison but said "talk of the sexual aspect is distracting to my professionalism".